Gavin Moodie writes in The Conversation (22.7.16) about a new UK plan to create a clearer pathway for post-school students into vocational training, highlighting elements that Australian governments might adopt to help boost TAFE participation rates here.
‘The UK has set out a plan to reform English vocational education. It’s post-16 skills plan will establish two educational tracks for students over 16 years old by building a technical education route to go alongside the well-established academic track.
‘The aim is to strengthen vocational education – now called “technical education” – which a series of reports found to be an incoherent mishmash of vocational, general and academic studies with weak educational and employment outcomes.
‘… College-based technical education will extend to diploma level and employment-based technical education will extend to baccalaureate level, incorporating the 1,000 degree apprenticeships which have been established since 2013.
‘This would reverse the blurring of academic, general and vocational education, which has been a major trend over the last few decades in England, as it has been in Australia, the US and elsewhere.’